When John Browne was chief executive of fuel and energy giant BP, he went to Moscow to address staff and got some great advice about talking to people.

It was 2003 and he was addressing staff of a joint venture between BP and a group of Russian businessmen that would run oil assets in Russia and Ukraine. "Just before I stepped up on the platform one of my Russian business partners pulled me to one side and said: 'I suggest you remember that after seventy years of Soviet rule, these people can smell propaganda a mile off. Talk only about human failures, not glorious successs'".